Welcome

We have moved!

In October 2014, after 8 years mastering audio for hundreds of amazing artists and albums at our former Greenpoint, Brooklyn, New York location, we have relocated our studio to Cedar Park, Texas - just a 25 minute drive North of downtown Austin, Texas. This move has enabled us to further refine our facility so that we can continue to bring the absolute best in premium digital and analog audio mastering to you, at rates incredibly affordable to independent artists and labels. Total Sonic Media gives you the opportunity to work with a mastering engineer with over 20 years experience - whose credits include releases by Sharon Jones & The Dap- Kings, The Budos Band, Bernie Worrell Orchestra, St. Paul and the Broken Bones, Bo Phillips, DJ Center, Erik Friedlander, Ljova, Martha Wash, The Parkington Sisters, M1, Snowmine, DJ Child, Norris Man, Lustre Kings Productions, Chuck D, Charles Bradley, Foo Fighters, and hundreds of others. TSM's mastering engineer, Steven Berson, is a graduate of Boston's renowned Berklee College of Music, and has studied the art of mastering directly with a number of other experienced engineers. Before opening Total Sonic Media he worked as the mastering engineer at Europadisk, the last commercial facility in North America to use the Neumann DMM vinyl record mastering system. He has worked on a wide variety of mixes (made in everything from the highest end facilities to humble home studios) and genres (ranging from rock, hip-hop, metal, funk, americana, soul, experimental, dance, pop, world, jazz, classical, folk, childrens music, gospel, etc., etc.) on a near daily basis, allowing him to develop the skills to hear what a track needs to get it sounding its best and what processes will get it there. An active musician for over 30 years, Steve also brings an understanding of how important music is to the artist, and always treats every job with the same amount of care as if it was his own music.

What is mastering?

Mastering is the final creative step in audio production. At it's most basic level it is simply creating the part (such as a CD-R master disc, or correctly encoded digital audio file) necessary for manufacturers or digital music distributors to make duplicates or replicas of your music. Beyond this mastering allows the enhancement of your final mixes through the tasteful use of equalization, compression, limiting, and other processes, so that your audio will sound the best it possibly can, allowing more "impact" and emotional involvement from the listener. Mastering also allows an album to smoothly flow from one track to another, so that the end listener never feels the need to adjust their volume or tone controls during listening through its entirety, and so that your album can become a cohesive entity in itself and not just a collection of tracks. Professional mastering allows your mixes to best translate to the widest range of playback systems, so that no matter what device the listener chooses to play your tracks with, your music will still sound great. By having your music mastered in a professional dedicated mastering studio, such as Total Sonic Media, you gain the chance for a fresh perspective on the mixes from an experienced engineer, in a highly accurate and revealing listening environment (so that any processing decisions made will be the right ones) with excellent processors and an ultra-clean signal path (so that any processes done will be made at the highest quality possible). The end result is that the masters created will be to the exact specifications needed by the replicator or distributor - and that the tracks you release will sound the best they possibly can be!

Welcome

We have moved!

In October 2014, after 8 years mastering audio for hundreds of amazing artists and albums at our former Greenpoint, Brooklyn, New York location, we have relocated our studio to Cedar Park, Texas - just a 25 minute drive North of downtown Austin, Texas. This move has enabled us to further refine our facility so that we can continue to bring the absolute best in premium digital and analog audio mastering to you, at rates incredibly affordable to independent artists and labels. Total Sonic Media gives you the opportunity to work with a mastering engineer with over 20 years experience - whose credits include releases by Sharon Jones & The Dap- Kings, The Budos Band, Bernie Worrell Orchestra, St. Paul and the Broken Bones, Bo Phillips, DJ Center, Erik Friedlander, Ljova, Martha Wash, The Parkington Sisters, M1, Snowmine, DJ Child, Norris Man, Lustre Kings Productions, Chuck D, Charles Bradley, Foo Fighters, and hundreds of others. TSM's mastering engineer, Steven Berson, is a graduate of Boston's renowned Berklee College of Music, and has studied the art of mastering directly with a number of other experienced engineers. Before opening Total Sonic Media he worked as the mastering engineer at Europadisk, the last commercial facility in North America to use the Neumann DMM vinyl record mastering system. He has worked on a wide variety of mixes (made in everything from the highest end facilities to humble home studios) and genres (ranging from rock, hip-hop, metal, funk, americana, soul, experimental, dance, pop, world, jazz, classical, folk, childrens music, gospel, etc., etc.) on a near daily basis, allowing him to develop the skills to hear what a track needs to get it sounding its best and what processes will get it there. An active musician for over 30 years, Steve also brings an understanding of how important music is to the artist, and always treats every job with the same amount of care as if it was his own music.

What is mastering?

Mastering is the final creative step in audio production. At it's most basic level it is simply creating the part (such as a CD-R master disc, or correctly encoded digital audio file) necessary for manufacturers or digital music distributors to make duplicates or replicas of your music. Beyond this mastering allows the enhancement of your final mixes through the tasteful use of equalization, compression, limiting, and other processes, so that your audio will sound the best it possibly can, allowing more "impact" and emotional involvement from the listener. Mastering also allows an album to smoothly flow from one track to another, so that the end listener never feels the need to adjust their volume or tone controls during listening through its entirety, and so that your album can become a cohesive entity in itself and not just a collection of tracks. Professional mastering allows your mixes to best translate to the widest range of playback systems, so that no matter what device the listener chooses to play your tracks with, your music will still sound great. By having your music mastered in a professional dedicated mastering studio, such as Total Sonic Media, you gain the chance for a fresh perspective on the mixes from an experienced engineer, in a highly accurate and revealing listening environment (so that any processing decisions made will be the right ones) with excellent processors and an ultra-clean signal path (so that any processes done will be made at the highest quality possible). The end result is that the masters created will be to the exact specifications needed by the replicator or distributor - and that the tracks you release will sound the best they possibly can be!